OSI Layer 2 management for mixed ProCurve environment

[OLARU Dan]

Hi all.

My switching environment is this:
~ HP ProCurves 4000M/8000M
~ HP ProCurves 4108GL
~ HP ProCurves 2524
~ HP ProCurves 2848
~ Cisco 3750 for Inter-VLAN routing
~ 50 unmanaged switches uplinked to ProCurves

I need a:
-> SIMPLE (i.e. low hardware requirements, but intelligently built -not dumb- easy to install and to use, as intuitive as possible, low time-consuming learning curve)
-> FREE (as in "free beer"; a 30-day trial would do for me right now)
-> SOFTWARE PRODUCT (for Linux or Windows)
that is capable to quickly do these management tasks for me, and be able to report the results nicely:

1. provide the ports of the managed switches where the unmanaged switches connect to ProCurves (one port per unmanaged switch)

2. provide CAM tables only for cooper ports of the managed switches (where the PCs, printers and servers connect), excluding the ports that I use for trunking. Report MAC, IP and Net_BIOS data for PCs, printers and servers; highlight the ports where printers and servers are connected in the managed switches.

3. provide CAM tables of the unmanaged switches (i.e. the MACs seen on the managed ProCurve ports functioning as downlinks for the unmanaged switches)

4. Identify the inter-switch links for the managed switches (for optical technology links as well as for copper trunks with 2 to 4 UTPs LACP-ed together)

5. provide me with information regarding copper ports that are probabily free (0-counters, DOWN status, switch uptime -for me to be able to determine the probability that a port is really free and does not have a MAC attached: it happened to often that I plugged somebody's PC only to findout in 2-days' time that somebody else was in vacation and I shamefully and idiotically disconnected her).

I need to prepare a report in 1 (ONE) day, that is TODAY!!!, with my Layer 2 topology, and my Layer 1 topology used for links between all my switches. I have to do Layer 1 by hand, but in the mean time I would like to have some software to dig for 1-3 hours into the switches an report me the data I need.

PLEASE HELP ME OUT HERE

Dan

[Matt Hobbs · Accepted solution]

That is quite a difficult task to get a report for all this information in only one day (seems a bit unreasonable to me unless you were asked to have a report 2 months ago).

Maybe have a look at:

CatTools:
http://www.kiwisyslog.com/kiwi-cattools-overview/

SolarWinds Engineer's Toolset:
http://www.solarwinds.com/products/toolsets/engineer.aspx

I'd be surprised if you found one application that did everything you require. Although what you are asking for is not that unreasonable. I'm not a programmer but given the requirements it does sound like standard SNMP OIDs could be used and it wouldn't be that difficult to make such a product to get this type of info. A good script writer could probably also do the same thing.

[OLARU Dan]

Cheers, Matt

I used to use CatTools for Windouz (for which I have a license, albeit for version 2.x) and Solarwinds. Great products from both the kiwis and the yanks - but each is doing just a bit of what I expect from a GOOD SNMP-capable layer 2 management product - commercial or otherwise free like in "free beer", or "free software" for that matter.

I am not so interested in Layer 3 right now - but I think the product from the kiwis would do well in this respect for L3.

I also had a 1-year license from the Norwegians form ObjectPlanet - good overall sniffer, but resourse-intensive piece of soft. It impacted heavilly on my HP L2 infrastructure, since a mirror port on my central switch 4108GL nearly brought that machine down - that's why I do mot use mirroring on the L2 infrastrucutre for now.

Anyway, thank you for your peer interest that you took in responding me, and for you time: this is the reason I gave you the bunny, even before reading your response.

Dan OLARU
Cheers.

[OLARU Dan]

How about some Fluke products? Hewlett-Packard OpenView-NNM? CA Unicenter-TNG? Something like PCM/PCM+ could do the trick for me? TopTools maybe?
Thanks

[Mohieddin Kharnoub]

Hi Dan

All you need could be found here :
http://www.sphere.ae/downloads.htm

Good Luck !!!

[OLARU Dan]

are you currently using this solution?